In re Civil Commitment of Feeney

• Decision Date: 12 November 2019
• Docket Number: A19-0926
• Citation: In re Civil Commitment of Feeney, A19-0926 (Minn. App. Nov 12, 2019)
• Parties: In re the Matter of the Civil Commitment of: Matthew David Feeney.
• Court: Minnesota Court of Appeals

In re the Matter of the Civil Commitment of: Matthew David Feeney.

A19-0926

STATE OF MINNESOTA IN COURT OF APPEALS

November 12, 2019

This opinion will be unpublished and may not be cited except as provided by Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2018).

Affirmed; motions denied

Ross, Judge

Washington County District Court

File No. 82-PR-18-2244

Paul Engh, Tyler Bliss, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for appellant)

Peter Orput, Washington County Attorney, James Zuleger, Assistant County Attorney, Stillwater, Minnesota (for respondent)

Considered and decided by Slieter, Presiding Judge; Ross, Judge; and Reilly, Judge.

UNPUBLISHED OPINION

ROSS, Judge

A Minnesota district court sentenced Matthew Feeney to prison for criminal sexual conduct, and a Massachusetts court sentenced him to five years' imprisonment to be served consecutive to his Minnesota sentence. The Washington County Attorney petitioned to have Feeney civilly committed shortly before his expected Minnesota release date. Feeney moved to dismiss the petition for lack of personal jurisdiction, citing his pending Massachusetts sentence and arguing that the county's petition violated the Full Faith and Credit Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the comity doctrine. The district court denied Feeney's motion, and Feeney filed this interlocutory appeal. We affirm the district court because no temporal limit bars the county's petition, because the district court properly exercised jurisdiction, and because continued commitment proceedings do not violate the Full Faith and Credit Clause, the Due Process Clause, or the comity doctrine.

FACTS

Matthew Feeney had a history of criminal-sexual-conduct convictions in Minnesota when he pleaded guilty in 2013 to two felony counts of criminal sexual conduct. The district court sentenced him to concurrent 109-month and 54-month prison terms. During his incarceration, he also pleaded guilty in Massachusetts superior court to three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or older, one count of enticing a child under 16, and one count of an unnatural act with a child. The Massachusetts superior court sentenced Feeney to five years' imprisonment to be served consecutive to his Minnesota sentence.

Feeney had resided in Washington County before his imprisonment. The Washington County Attorney petitioned the district court on February 8, 2019, to commit Feeney as a sexually dangerous person and sexual psychopathic personality under the Minnesota Commitment and Treatment Act: Sexually Dangerous Persons and Sexual Psychopathic Personalities (MCTA). Minn. Stat. §§ 253D.01-.36 (2018). The county served Feeney with the petition that same day at the Moose Lake Minnesota Correctional Facility, from which Feeney had an expected release date of July 1, 2019.

The district court conducted a preliminary hearing on February 22, 2019. Feeney appeared with counsel. He asked the district court to appoint a neutral examiner and waived the 90- and 120-day deadlines in Minnesota Statutes section 253B.08, subdivision 1 (2018), which would have otherwise required a final hearing before July 1, 2019. Feeney requested a hearing date in August.

Feeney proposed different timing and confinement scenarios based on his expected release from prison in Minnesota, his commitment trial, and his Massachusetts sentence. In one scenario, which would depend on Massachusetts authorities' approval, Feeney would remain in Minnesota to serve his five-year Massachusetts sentence and then face a commitment trial. In another, Feeney would be transferred to Massachusetts to begin his Massachusetts sentence but be immediately returned to Minnesota for the commitment trial. Feeney's last scenario involved holding him during his supervised-release period:

COUNSEL: Under the civil commitment law, this court can hold Mr. Feeney at the Department of Corrections an additional 210 days after he reaches his supervised release date of July 1st. . . .

THE COURT: And you believe that that provision would basically overrule Massachusetts['s] power to bring him there for [its] sentence?

COUNSEL: I will certainly contend that, yes. It's provided in Minnesota law that that can be happening.

THE COURT: But he essentially stays in our prison facility pending this commitment matter being resolved?

COUNSEL: Correct. He would stay in the custody of the Department of Corrections in Minnesota for that period of time.

The district court scheduled the final hearing for August 12, 2019, over the county's objection and ordered in part that Feeney "shall continue to be confined in a Minnesota Department of Corrections facility until a final determination on the commitment petition, pursuant to Minn. Stat. § 253D.10, subd. 2."

Feeney filed a "Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction," arguing that, "[a]s of July 1, 2019, [the district court] is by law without jurisdiction over Mr. Feeney, when he is to begin serving his five year Commonwealth of Massachusetts sentence there." Feeney argued that preventing his transfer to Massachusetts violated the Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause, its statutory counterpart 28 U.S.C. § 1738 (2012), and the comity doctrine. The district court denied the motion, concluding that it had subject-matter jurisdiction over the commitment and reasoning that it had "personal jurisdiction over Mr. Feeney once he was served and appeared." The district court recognized that "Massachusetts has its own interests and own rights, but [Feeney] doesn't have . . . standing to advance objections on behalf of Massachusetts." It clarified, "Massachusetts does have an order. The Court is not changing that or disrespecting that order, but [Massachusetts] may have to wait . . . until Minnesota has conducted business with the same defendant."

Feeney filed an ostensibly interlocutory appeal, and the district court stayed further proceedings. The county moved to dismiss Feeney's appeal or to strike portions of Feeney's brief and addendum. We deferred ruling on the motion, which we now address with the merits of the appeal.

DECISION

Feeney argues that we should reverse the district court's denial of his motion to dismiss because the county's civil-commitment petition is premature and its timing violates his due-process rights. He also argues that continued commitment proceedings violate the Full Faith and Credit Clause, its statutory counterpart, and the comity doctrine. The county asks us either to dismiss Feeney's appeal or to strike portions of Feeney's appellate pleadings and affirm the district court.

I

We first address the county's position that we must dismiss the appeal for failing to raise issues suitable to our interlocutory review. The scope of review on an interlocutory appeal is generally limited to immediately appealable issues. See Olson v. First Church of Nazarene, 661 N.W.2d 254, 260 (Minn. App. 2003) (limiting scope of appeal to jurisdictional issue). We may review otherwise non-appealable issues if they are inextricably intertwined with the properly appealed issue. See Aon Corp. v. Haskins, 817 N.W.2d 737, 739, 742 (Minn. App. 2012) (holding that issues necessarily resolved by, and subsumed in or coterminous with, a properly appealed issue are inextricably intertwined). And where the parties have fully briefed issues likely to arise later, the interests of justice and judicial economy may warrant our review of issues otherwise failing to fall within the customary scope of our appellate review. See Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 103.04; Ryan Contracting Co. v. O'Neill & Murphy, LLP, 868 N.W.2d 473, 481 (Minn. App. 2015) (addressing whether an appellant was entitled to a jury trial on damages "in the interests of judicial economy because it is likely to arise on remand"), aff'd as modified, 883 N.W.2d 236 (Minn. 2016).

Feeney appeals on purported personal-jurisdiction grounds. Orders denying motions to dismiss for lack of personal or subject-matter jurisdiction are immediately appealable. See McGowan v. Our Savior's Lutheran Church, 527 N.W.2d 830, 832-33 (Minn. 1995). Justiciability issues are also immediately appealable. See Cruz-Guzman v. State, 916 N.W.2d 1, 7-8 (Minn. 2018) (reviewing justiciability issue raised on interlocutory appeal as essential to jurisdiction). Personal jurisdiction generally requires a connection between the party and Minnesota, and a form of process satisfying due process and applicable rules. See In re Ivey, 687 N.W.2d 666, 670 (Minn. App. 2004), review denied (Minn. Dec. 22, 2004). Feeney fails to discuss these fundamental requirements. But for the reasons that follow, we decline to dismiss his appeal despite this omission because his arguments implicate immediately appealable or inextricably intertwined issues, and the interests of judicial economy favor our review.

We are not persuaded by Feeney's argument that the county's commitment petition is premature and will become "ripe only after [he] nears completion of his Massachusetts sentence." We rejected a similar argument in In re Civil Commitment of Nielsen, framing the issue in justiciability terms and clarifying that the prematurity argument challenged the county attorney's statutory authority to petition. 863 N.W.2d 399, 401-02 (Minn. App. 2015), review denied (Minn. Apr. 14, 2015). Feeney's argument that the petition's timing violates his right to due process is inextricably intertwined with the question of whether the county's authority to petition is temporally restrained. The crux of Feeney's concern is that allowing commitment proceedings now would prevent him from gathering treatment-related evidence that might aid him in opposing the commitment petition. As a result, a determination in the county's favor in this appeal is in effect a determination that it may petition without regard to Feeney's potential to obtain future favorable evidence. Feeney's full faith and credit and comity arguments imply that the Minnesota district court's jurisdiction terminated on his anticipated July 1,...